Art & Exhibitions
At Lehmann Maupin, Tracey Emin’s Confessional Work Now Seems Fine Fiction
THE DAILY PIC: The YBA now feels like a character that she's dreamed up.
Blake Gopnik
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THE DAILY PIC: Tracey Emin made this blanket, called Hotel International, in 1993, and I just saw it in a group show at Lehmann Maupin gallery in New York. (Click on my image to zoom in close on the piece.) I have to admit that the first time I reviewed Emin’s confessional works, back in the 90s, I panned them, but now I’m finding them very compelling. I no longer care that they buy into the Romantic cliché of the artist as a unique and superior kind of damaged good. (They still do.) I now read pieces like Hotel International as being about some fictional character named “Tracey Emin” whose life seems full of narrative-worthy event, and who only happens to also be the artist at hand. Anyway, I’ll give a second chance to any art work that, in this era of distraction, compels my close attention for many minutes in a row. (©Tracey Emin, courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong)
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